This is only a test…

I can feel the ever-present knot increasing in my stomach. I’m getting really good at this.

 He is 24. He isn’t especially funny or polite. He smokes too much pot, acts too suspicious, and talks too slow. He is too self-involved. I don’t like the weird hat he wears.

 With all of this in mind, can someone please explain to me why I seem to care that he isn’t calling? It is nice waking up with someone beside me, I’m not going to lie. But, the fact remains that I wish he had never called. I wish it could have remained a true one-night stand. I wish he didn’t frequent my new favourite bar every weekend – thus making me less likely to go there myself. He is no where close to what I want or what I deserve.

 This is the quarter-life crisis, in full effect. I stated somewhere earlier that I couldn’t conceive meaningless sex. Now, I can definitely conceive it and even spot some form of intrigue in it – and I don’t think I have any interest in it. If this scenario has taught me anything, it is that I do not in anyway want to sleep with any friend of mine, unless we both have the intention of taking it further. This guy is basically a stranger, and while this doesn’t hurt much yet, I am experienced enough in my own emotions to spot the coming danger.

 When he left today, he said he may call me tonight. I don’t want to say this out loud because I’m afraid it will come true – but I hope he doesn’t call me tonight. I hope he never calls me again.

“life goes on and on anon” stephin merritt.

if a person spends enough time in their own company, they soon realise that their life is made up of a tremendously long and impossibly boring list of activities. lives are not primarily composed of “great” events. believe it or not, that day when you married your high school sweetheart came and went in a heartbeat and your first child will not be born again (expect, perhaps, though some vague religious gesture).

the large part of a person’s existence is spent anonymously. if it could be boiled down to a single moment, it would be that instant in which you stare blankly into space, bored to the point of perversion by another conversation with your great aunt june. am i being too frank? well i’m not your father so i’ve no reason to lie to you.

it is all so perfectly encompased in the word ‘etcetera’, meaning ‘and the rest’. ‘i was born…and the rest.’

i re-familiarise you with this truth not only to make you miserable but also to debunk the myths surrounding heroes. it is perfectly easy to become a hero. save a baby from a burning pram and your heroism is solidified, even if it took you less than a minute and only cost you the hem of your trousers. it is so much harder to live day to day. i find myself constantly amazed by people’s willingness to get up in the morning and watch a batman omnibus again and again and again ad nauseum. that is to say, i am impressed by the way in which people face the etcetera-ness of their lives each day and only rarely consider the joys of self-immolation.

i hope you’re taking notes. this will be in the june exam.

I dislike these kinds of posts because its more interesting to be talking about this philosopher or that, this line of reasoning or that, but sometimes the content of philosophy comes together with questions of finite community and ultimately of ethics in general. In fact occasions of our own interactions become the best examples or illustrations of why we believe that the ideas we hold are important to the world at large. It is the question of “local ethics”, how Big Ideas and boring everyday stuff touch.

On the Street

I was strolling down my electronic neighborhood today – I usually walk through my blogroll, and then once in a while I then go over to Splintering Bone Ashes who has a nice distribution of blogs and the titles of recent posts outside my usual sphere (SBA never really posts but I like him when he does). So I’m strolling along, down streets I don’t always follow and I run into this bit of rude graffiti chalked on a public wall (I say rude because this posting was vaguely directed towards some anonymous and generalized many, but also with targeted persons in mind, and for those likely walk down that particular electronic street, not unlike other graffiti in the “real” world):

Notes From the Chalk-Breaker

The immediate source for the prejudicial hilarity is Levi Bryant’s site Larval Subjects a post entitled: ”Important Theory of Social Relations in New Media”. It has an original source (which a commenter provided), but Bryant initially left it unreferenced as he no doubt wanted it to express his own feelings about the internet contributions of those who don’t write under their “normal” name, a pre-occupation of his and others of circle. Although Bryant once was one of these anonymous types who actually vigorously attempted to conceal his identity (or so I am told, and he admits), he regularly has attacked pseudonymous bloggsters as inauthentic, and in many instances morally suspect. Since coming out of the virtual closet, he has been in the fore-front of uncloaking otherwise cloaked ones. We really must read the meaning of the chalkboard comic as his own intent.

“Larval Subjects”, the name under which he once wrote, seems to feel that if human beings are not restrained by the social consequences of their normal ”name”, they will produce what is worst in them. It it not just the Ring of Gyges, but a Ring of Gyges combined with an audience that draws out of human subjectivity what is pejoratively called “total fuckwad” (or those, as Levi Bryant has also grouped: Grey Vampire, the Troll, and inconcordantly as well, the homophobe, the nationalist, the Nazi, the KKK member). We are to imagine that the difference between Fuckwad and the Normal person is simply the combination of anonymity and audience which turns the latter into the former. Leaving Plato’s assumption aside, I have to say that this is a curious, in fact sad view of the world, especially for those who spend a lot of time discussing things on the internet. And it has some rather simple-minded conceptions of what “normal” is and how it operates.

First of all every interaction contains degrees of “normal” nameness, and anonymity. Which is to say the human being has potentialities of in/coherent expression far beyond the name they are under. And the “norm” within the term “normal” is not always something to esteem. And whether “Larval Subjects” posted this comic, or “Levi Bryant” did is a question of community. Most of us don’t really care who “Levi Bryant” is, but we do care (or HAVE cared) who “Larval Subjects” is. The “name” that circulates and falls under community standard consequences is equal to that sphere. For those that wish to give up their nom de plume and attach the products of their writings, including all those interactions to OTHER spheres of normalization are not those who are better persons. They are working on the powers of simply a singular identify.

I refuse both notions that:

1. The only reason why we behave civilly or even altrustically is because we are restrained from doing what we really would like to do.

2. Our “normal” name includes the very best of what we have to offer others.

Autonymy and Anonymous

In fact for those that have experienced writing pseudonymously, there is a definite benefit from this anto-nymy. One simply is able to explore new relations under the context of a new community which do not have much to do with the other communities that can define you (and in defining you, cause you to see yourself in a constricted sense). This is to say, the auto-nym is not so much a freedom from the behavioral restraints of others, as the possibility to redefine oneself in new contexts, under specific projects or trajectories. To discover oneself, so to speak, something beyond the dominant identity that sometimes conflates the “ego” with the proper name. In fact it is quite the case that the virtual intersubjectivity afforded by autonymy is necessarily trans-subjective, pulling at the boundaries of the otherwise regards as whole “self”, opening up possibilities that are entirely creative.

It is important to see that what is loosely regarded as anonymous, when in the context of a regular and interactive (shared) expression is a case of autonymy. And that the “auto” though it expresses the way that one names oneself, the power and authenticity is earned amid a community…it is an autonomy of the name itself, the pseudonym belongs to everyone, and not just you. You are not the locus of its laws. My name here is “kvond” or sometimes “Frames /sing”. I do not own this name. I am made from it, in part, thrown in its direction. It becomes a center of gravity, both for myself but also others.

I had the coincidental experience of name-experiment once that is worth mentioning.  I was a younger man and had romantically dreamed of traveling to and eventually livng in Florence. I saved up a bunch of cash, flew across the Atlantic and headed out blindly to the mesmerizing city. I found a little pensione and resolved to find a job, start a little life there, despite the fact I spoke no Italian (ha). I moved into my pensione where I was to stay for the next month or so and upon registering me the owner read my passport incorrectly. My name is very long and takes up two lines, and she identified a nice Italian sounding middle name as my Christian name, my proper name. She pronounced it, I hesitated, and then I went with it. For my time there, exploring this aspect of myself, this small vector, this line of flight, I was (insert name). It should not make a difference, but it did. Everything I experienced and expressed came out of this new center of circulation, in its orbit. What I was there was not false. It was from a node on a rhizome.

For me the cocooning nature of an experiment of self under name does not generate “Fuckwad” or anything like it (though certainly people can find the me unpleasant at times). When someone is rude to me in text under a specific name I never think to myself “Ah, I wish I had that guy’s REAL name!”  It is much more the case that autonymy propels one forward into interesting spaces. And I think it cool that in those spaces some people are under their “real” names (normal) and some are not. Some people want to say, “Hey! This is me, pay attention to what I really am, and this is what I think.” and other people are like “Hey, forget about who you “really” are, and who I “really” am, and think about this interesting thought”. Try on “this”.

What is extra curious about Levi Bryant’s Normal = Good/ Anonymous = Bad is that it is quite Fascistic in conception. (Levi writes at length how pervasive the so called Neoliberal system of singular subjectivity is, something he equates with Nazism (sigh).) Which is to say the way that illicit behavior is to be controlled is through public exposure under a single register. If we want to control the behavior of others we need to expose them to a panoptical ”eye”, an eye that takes its main measurement upon the Name. As a matter of policy, opening up what is otherwise “private” (be it a bedroom, or personal friends, an email) is key to normalizing these aberrations. If one wants to stomp out homosexuality or Communism, let’s say, one exposes what is in the closet, and then attaches it to a “Name” to be regulated. One brings to bear the armature of the Law upon the Name, and does so in a direction tending towards universalization. It’s an interesting theory, but one must acknowledge to where it points.

I side in another direction. I prefer to esteem the long history of pseudonymous writings, and I esteem the virtual world’s new potentiality for micro-climates of interpersonal subjectivity. Here names create vectors for growth and discovery. Yes, in the cloisters of experiment surely there are possibilities for abuse. With freedom from what in Rap is called your “government name” can indeed come a boldness that slips into what is base or simple-minded. This is the risk of freedom itself. It involves the possibility of a regression. But I do not think that autonymy essentially involves regressive expression, nor do I even think that human beings are those that need to be essentially restrained from what is worst. Indeed, the abuse of one’s name, the exercise of its earned and somewhat deceptive power, has as many crimes as the autonymous. The “name” contains no more good than bad.

I sense as well that those who argue that the Ring of Gyges is revelatory of essential human nature are those under a kind of self-confession. They personally struggle with their own anonymity, are uncomfortable with it, and dream that one day their “name”, their real name (that signifier) will hold as much power as the anonymity they both fear and lust after.

INDIRECTIONS offers a harmonizing response to the above, bringing out what I hoped was best in what “kvond” was saying about the auto-nym.

For related but different thoughts on the twists of subjectivity and the subversion of Name, consider a prospective Antigone Complex: What is the “Antigone Complex”? Posthuman Tensored Agency, and More on the Antigone Complex

It has been a crazy few weeks, looking back. Lord Meddlesome’s Digital Economy Bill, the kafkaesque prosecution and imprisonment of “JFL” for maintaining his right to silence and presumption of innocence, the latest battle in the new Crypto War, ISP’s announcing interception of data without warrants, and today a prominent blogger announcing they are shutting up shop after being “outed”, probably by their IP address.

The situation looks pretty dire. In Ethical and Social Issues in the Information Age, Joseph Kizza laments: “Surveillance technology has progressed to the point that it is possible to identify individuals walking city streets from satellites in orbit. Telephone, fax and email communications can routinely be monitored. Personal information files are kept on citizens from cradle to grave. There is nowhere to run… nowhere to hide. Personal privacy is dead.”

W. H. Auden, whom those of a certain age will recall tackling for the old Eng Lit O levels, is remembered by many for his war poetry, although this was just a small part of his output, which engaged “with moral and political issues, …love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.”  Of all his works, however, my favourite, and the one that really strikes home today, is “The Unknown Citizen”:

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an oldfashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on the Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of the year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; When there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Auden has captured the essence of what the state today wants of us: all of our data, all of our measurements and statistics, obedience in the sight of an all-seeing, all-knowing authority, to whom, for all the information they collect and collate about us, we are simply faceless numbers, not individuals with feelings and emotions and dreams. We are defined by our data, and conformity is the highest virtue. This unknown citizen is virtuous because he does all the right things, and the government can produce reports to show that he did all the right things. He even had the right opinions, owned the right products, and had the correct number of kids, whose indoctrination in state conformity he did not challenge. He is a commodity of the state, and the more data they collected about the man, the less they really knew him.

So what can we do to preserve our privacy in order to protect the one thing we truly own – our identity? As an article I read on Filesharefreak points out, “Whilst there’s not much one can do about Big Brother™ and his Orwellian cohorts from videotaping you at the local convenience store, or taking pictures of your licence plate at every street corner, or even RFIDing your next born – the least we can do is not let it happen to us in our own living room.” And there are surprisingly many things we can do about that.

Every website you visit, every link you click, is data potentially available to someone else. Your ISP may be keeping a copy of the sites you’ve been visiting, right down to the pages viewed. Are you sure they can be trusted not to lose that data? One very simple solution is to use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. This is a private network “tunneling” over a public network (ie the Internet) to make its connections. Secure VPNs use cryptographic tunnelling protocols to block intercepts, packet sniffing, identity spoofing, and maintain privacy. For the novice user, Hotspot Shield is a good place to start. Its free and requires no real technical know how to get it fired up. Also very handy if you use wifi hotspots on your laptop, and want to ensure your security. Nobody can see your real IP address, nobody can see where you are surfing or what you are doing. Not even your ISP. It does have a distracting ad banner at the top of the page, but this is easily removed by using the Adblock Plus plug in for Firefox.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns, “Google, MSN Search, Yahoo!, AOL, and most other search engines collect and store records of your search queries. If these records are revealed to others, they can be embarrassing or even cause great harm. Would you want strangers to see searches that reference your online reading habits, medical history, finances, sexual orientation, or political affiliation? …In August 2006, AOL published 650,000 users’ search histories on its website. Though each user’s logs were only associated with a random ID number, several users’ identities were readily discovered based on their search queries. For instance, the New York Times connected the logs of user No. 4417749 with 62 year-old Thelma Arnold. These records exposed, as she put it, her “whole personal life.”

So use Scroogle – “no cookies, no search-term records, access log deleted within 48 hours.”

Anonymous email could be the difference between a concerned whistleblower remaining anonymous or being sacked by an unscrupulous employer. Use AnonymousSpeech: “Any inquiries regarding the identity of our subscribers are ignored. We do not respond to any of them. Our servers are constantly moving in different countries (Malaysia, Japan, Panama, Bolivia, Laos) and are always outside the US and Europe.”

What if a hacker gained access to your PC, or burglars stole it? Encryption would prevent them from being able to access your personal files and information, and regular use of disc wiping software such as Eraser will ensure that they don’t find information you previously deleted. With laptops being so small these days, they’re an obvious target for thieves – even the government loses them/has them stolen. Unfortunately they never seem to think about encrypting laptops or USB drives containing all of our personal data…

These are all legal solutions to protecting your identity online, and the Home Office wants us to protect our identities: identity theft/fraud costs the UK economy £1.2 billion annually. Criminals could steal your identity and use the proceeds to fund terrorism.

Check out How to Hide Everything You Do as a good starting point.

All the world’s a stage,…….
And the men and women,

merely players.

-William Shakespeare

The central theme of As you like it and one of Shakespeare’s most popular quotes merely meant that how we are able to play our different roles when we don a mask for different occasions.
We all act differently to fit the situation, a wife acts differently to her kids as opposed to her husband. Well to be honest it’s kind of like multiple personality disorder in a good type of way. But then the question arises as to why we need to wear a different “mask” with different people. The answer lies in Shakespeare’s quote. For when we are in disguise of mask we get the feeling of anonymity, we can be who we want to, for when we are in disguise we feel much freer. For when we are under disguise the rules change, a kid can tell his friends about the stupid drunk night that he had, but necessarily be able to tell his parents about it. I guess this is where the fairytale stories of masquerade balls and how our girl meets our prince charming and they prince charming does not know who the girl is, but girl/cinderella is afraid to show her true self but they fall in love and happily ever after.
I guess this is what Shakespeare meant by “and the men and women, merely players” we all play the role of the “mask” that we wear for the occasion, I’m guessing the story of Cinderella would not have had a happy ending if she had not played the role of a princess that night.
So my question would be what mask are you wearing tonight?

I’m currently reading The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight. Undecided on it at the moment, but I did enjoy these thoughts on blogging.

Blogging may be the world’s most fascinating form of communication. Someone jots down their ideas, clicks “publish”, and those ideas instantaneously appear for the whole world to see. The world does see. More importantly, the world sometimes comments back. Sometimes anonymously and sometimes bitingly and sometimes it hurts. The first lesson a blogger learns is this: anyone in the world can say anything they want at anytime on a blog. The second lesson is this: you may not know that person. In my first week of blogging … I learned these two lessons, and they shocked me. One of the first questions that wandered its way through my head when I began reading a comment on something I had written was: “Who is this person anyway?”

After years of teaching, preaching, and writing, comments and questions were common for me. I am used to being questioned. In fact, I enjoy it. But teachers know who is saying what and more often than not we also know where our students’ questions are “coming from”. But those who drop comments in the comment box on a blog can do so anonymously or with a fictitious name. Under the cloak of anonymity, they can become bold and brazen and can blast away. Incivility marks blogs far too often. To be sure, blogs form blog communities where most learn enough about the other commenters that, even if we don’t know the person personally, we recognise their electronic personality. Knowing one another restores civility. Still, until one discovers “who is who” and “where they are coming from”, comments can sometimes startle and shock.

Food for thought.

I have tried blogging before and quite soon enough realized that am not good at it. I am not a man of words , have no fascinating stories to tell ,no yummy recipes to share . 

Sometimes I get a little high and wish to change something in the world . But this sudden rush of blood to this brain of mine , gushes out in no time. And am back to my lazy self.

I am writing this blog , because I am tired of self censoring what I write. Everywhere I go twitter, fb , myspace , orkut ,blogspot there are the same people. Colleagues , friends , family.

I end up writing for them .  Lets see if these people find out who this belongs to. Until that happens , I want to write whatever I feel like .

If you have read this long , you have won an award for endurance. Go get yourself a nice glass of champagne !

It is futile to try to stay anonymous by getting your name or data purged from the Internet, once it is already out there. Attempts at such censorship have backfired repeatedly and spectacularly, giving rise to the term Streisand effect. A recent lawsuit provides the latest demonstration: two convicted German killers (who have completed their prison sentences) are attempting to prevent Wikipedia from identifying them.

The law in Germany tries to “protect the name and likenesses of private persons from unwanted publicity.” Of course, the Wikimedia foundation is based in the United States, and this attempt runs head-on into the First Amendment, the right to Free Speech. European countries have a variety of restrictions on speech—Holocaust denial is illegal, for instance. But there is little doubt about how U.S. courts will see the issue; Jennifer Granick of the EFF has a nice write-up.

The aspect that interests me is that even if there weren’t a Free Speech issue, it would be utterly impossible for the court system to keep the names of these men from the Internet. I wonder if the German judge who awarded a judgment against the Wikimedia foundation was aware that it would achieve exactly the “unwanted publicity” that the law was intended to avoid. He would probably have ruled as he did in any case, but it is interesting to speculate.

Legislators, on the other hand, would do well to be aware of the limitations of censorship, and the need to update laws to reflect the rules of the information age. There are always alternatives, although they usually involve trade-offs. In this instance, perhaps one option is a state-supplied alternate identity, analogous to the Witness Protection Program?

Returning to the issue of enforceability, the European doctrine apparently falls under “rights of the personality,” specifically the “right to be forgotten,” according to this paper that discusses the trans-atlantic clash. I find the very name rather absurd; it reminds me of attempting not to think of an elephant (try it!)

The above paper, written from the European perspective, laments the irreconcilable differences between the two viewpoints on the issue of Free Speech vs. Privacy. However, there is no discussion of enforceability. The author does suspect, in the final paragraph, that the European doctrine will become rather meaningless due to the Internet, but he believes this to be purely a consequence of the fact that the U.S. courts have put Free Speech first.

I don’t buy it—even if the U.S. courts joined Europe in recognizing a “right to be forgotten,” it would still be essentially unenforceable. Copyright-based rather than privacy-based censorship attempts offer us a lesson here. Copyright law has international scope, due to being standardized by the WIPO, and yet the attempt to take down the AACS encryption key was pitifully unsuccessful.

Taking down a repeat offender (such as a torrent tracker) or a large file (the Windows 2000 source code leak) might be easier. But if we’re talking about a small piece of data, the only factor that seems to matter is the level of public interest in the sensitive information. The only times when censorship of individual facts has been (somewhat) successful in the face of public sentiment is within oppressive regimes with centralized Internet filters.

There are many laws, particularly privacy laws, that need to be revamped for the digital age. What might appear obvious to technologists might be much less apparent to law scholars, lawmakers and the courts. I’ve said it before on this blog, but it bears repeating: there is an acute need for greater interdisciplinary collaboration between technology and the law.

I took a walk through Midtown Manhattan late Thanksgiving night, and other than a lone sanitation worker and the occasional cab driver trying to hustle a fare, I was alone. I have always found things like blinding light pollution and towering buildings to be reassuring aspects of New York’s built environment, but without the attendant crowds, traffic, and noise they became jarring.

The anonymity inherent in being a part of a large, constantly moving population has always been one of my favorite features of large cities. Instead of taking a vacation to “get away from it all,” I can simply hop on the subway; wherever I emerge, even if it’s less than a mile away, no one knows me, no one is involved in my problems, and no one will remember me.

But as I wandered the empty Midtown streets, I couldn’t help but be unnerved by my conspicuousness.

London’s urban anonymity amid well-defined neighborhoods makes it one of my favorite cities. But as is so often the case in New York City, what is an attractive element of urban living elsewhere quickly becomes too much of a good thing here.

For example, last week, a boy with Asperger’s syndrome got into trouble at school, and, afraid of facing his parents, rode the subway for 11 days.  He was found unharmed, but the police have faced criticism for taking so long to find him.

Consider that 7.7. million people travel the subway system’s 26 routes on a typical weekday. The 6 train alone has more daily riders than any other U.S. rapid transit system save the Washington D.C. Metro. Chicago’s entire L Train system has 46,00 fewer riders than this single New York City line.

Put another way, more than one and a half times as many people ride the 6 train each day as live in Jackson, the largest metropolitan area in of Mississippi. And that’s only one of 26 lines.

Maybe I’ve already become a jaded New Yorker, but I’m amazed that the police found the child at all. Regardless, it’s all too easy to become swallowed up by this city. That’s exactly what happened to a friend of mine shortly after he moved here.

While on his way to work, he was arrested for riding his bike on the sidewalk. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently that’s a ticketable offense, and warrants arrest if the accused isn’t carrying identification, which my friend wasn’t.

Anyway, the police offered him one local phone call, but his wife still had an out-of-town number and he didn’t know any local numbers off the top of his head, so he sat in jail for 28 hours.

When he didn’t come home that night, his wife began making calls and discovered that he never made it to work or band practice. While she called the police and (attempted) to file a missing person report, family drove down from Massachusetts and began searching the area.

Finally, someone at the police department realized that the subject of the missing person report had been arrested…by the same precinct that she had filed the report with.

So much for the joys of urban anonymity.

I know, I know, it’s tryptophan.  But it’s a pun, get it?  Trip? Tryp?  Anyways, while Elle wraps up the account of our Cheshire adventures, I wanted to set your minds at ease… because real-world people have been asking (don’t you know we’re anonymous!?  Gosh!) where our next journey is.  What short memories some of you have!  While you’re settling in for a day of gluttony, we’re off feeling self-important running the Manchester Road Race tomorrow morning!  Tonight, though, we’re going to forgo awkward seeing-everyone-we-graduated-from-high-school-with visits to our hometowns to instead set our sights on that city with village charm.  A TWO-DAY town visit, coming up!  See you out in Manchester tonight or on the course tomorrow.  And, of course, we look forward to your comments on the Cheshire post, going up later today!

Over the past few months Evan Ratliff and Wired magazine ran a simple social experiment: they wanted to see how easy it was to assume a new identity in the Information Age (and leave your old identity completely behind). Evan’s plan was to disappear on August 15 and try to stay hidden until September 15, challenging people to identify his new persona and locate him. Evan would agree to live a “normal” life with his new identity, and certain details of his activities (e.g. purchases) would be posted online by Wired available to anyone who wanted to join the search. These details would be typical pieces of information that a private investigator would have access to on a real-life manhunt.

The story raises a number of interesting questions about the nature of anonymity (or pseuodnymity) in such a techno-centric age. Evan used both technical hacks and misinformation to keep people off his trail, but eventually, he was found.

You can read the lengthy tale of this vanishing act at Wired.

In a relatively recent typical bit of Huffington Post 12X12 fluffery (for those of you who can stomach this kind of substance-less crap: AA: The Magic of Bill Wilson — no fucking kidding, that’s the post’s actual title), author Jeff Witzeman prattles on about the ‘magical’ wonders of Bill, Bob, the 12X12, and the modern day miracle that is Alcoholics Anonymous.  Witzeman leaves no cliche unturned, no baseless quote uncited (the apocryphal Aldous Huxley quote about Bill being the “greatest social architect of our time” which — oddly enough — can’t be found in any of Huxley’s writings or published or recorded interviews), and no line of absurdist logic unapplied.

And why not?  Mr. Witzeman is by his own account is a ‘former’ (i.e., failed) actor, musician, a patent holder (for a ‘putter’), and a freelance writer.  Oh yeah, he has a blog, too … which will go unlinked to on this page.

Now those are some qualifications, huh?  He’s no doubt a true-believing member of the AA tribe as well, but we here at Stinkin Thinkin respect the principle [/snark] of anonymity and so will leave that character defect alone.  Being someone who can construct a sentence in the English language and has a soft-spot for all things AA and 12X12 appears to be more than enough for ardent step proponent Arianna Huffington and her faux-liberal bit of WWW real estate.  ’Freelance writer’ Witzeman has a basic grasp of grammar and syntax and the decidedly non-medical credentials to digress on the ‘disease’ of alcoholism.  That’s more than enough to ring the Pavlovian bell of the editors at Huffington Post.

Rather than go into a lengthy rebuttal of Witzeman’s tired, cliche-ridden, utterly unsubstantiated claims (the only source cited is Tom Hartigan’s “Bill W” biography — how’s that for objective, exhaustive research?), I will simply say this in response: Rather than being one of the “greatest social architect of our time”, Bill Wilson was probably one of the biggest dicks of the 20th century and Alcoholics Anonymous is the premier non-solution for a non-disease.  The ‘magic’ of Bill Wilson was his ability to convince a highly devoted — even if a distinct numerical minority — group of people mostly here in the United States but sprinkled here and there in other western  countries that a vaguely non-denominational, quasi-religious version of tent-show Protestant Revivalism (very popular at the time of AA’s founding in the mid- to late 1930’s) was the “solution” for alcoholism.  In the process, Wilson managed to make himself relatively wealthy, screw over more than a few close friends, literally screw more than a handful of female AA’s, and create an organization that reviles individual thought while lauding the “[g]od consciousness” of an ever ambiguous “we”.

Yessiree … that’s one helluva trick!

Witzeman regurgitates every outright lie (Bill’s walking “by the bar” at the Mayflower Hotel [see:orange-papers.org -- top of the page]; the ‘correspondence’ with Carl Jung which consisted of exactly one exchanged letter with a near dead and senile Jung) and far-flung bit of pseudo-history he can into his hagiography. But in what has to be the most arrogant and ill-informed bit of freelance writer/golf-afficianado gone psychological/medical expert, he lets loose with the following:

“Extrapolating this wisdom [Dr. Silkworth's still completely unsubstantiated diagnosis of alcoholism as "A physical allergy combined with mental obsession."], we can see that “challenging” someone to give up smoking is like challenging someone to quit having diabetes. “C’mon” someone may say, “go on a diet, I challenge you to take off 50 pounds,” which may work for a couple months only to see the weight put right back on again. Why? Because there is an illness at work here, not a matter of flipping on a switch and changing behavior. But the illness, once a light shines on the underlying reasons can be arrested.

Or how about depression? Now there’s a misunderstood disease. How many articles do we read about depression being something where you can think your way into a positive outlook? For Wilson, he suffered deeply from depression after AA got on its feet and people accused him of “not working the program.” But depression functions very much like addiction, as many of us in recovery can attest, in that it too is an illness, that has it’s own unique recovery process.”

I’m not going even going to try to rebut that.  It is so fallacious and stupid that I’m stunned that anyone would even think about printing it.

Witzeman conflates everything but natural disasters with a state of ‘disease’.  And of course every ‘disease’ requires only the ‘light’ of the 12 steps shone upon  it so that it might be arrested.  So all the people I know who died of AIDS, one of my best friends who spent a year and a half fighting leukemia, my father-in-law whose got pancreatic cancer … all they needed (or need) is the 12 steps in order to arrest their ‘disease’.

Pardon me, Mr. Witzeman, but fuck you in the ass with one of your ‘patented’putters.

I guess the upside to this tripe and Roger Ebert’s self-outing death rattle is that 12X12 is becoming aware of just how utterly irrelevant, pointless, and sometimes genuinely harmful it can be in an age of epi-genetics and rich, consistent, deeply researched theories of mind.  Speaking as a person who has suffered with severe recurrent depression for 15 years, I can tell you that I never once read or heard anyone suggest that I could simply “think” myself into a more positive outlook.  Like most of his 12X12 brethren are prone to, Mr. Witzeman is just plain lying in order to serve the purposes of promoting his beloved program.

Just like his ‘magician’ idol, the great bullshitter Bill Wilson.

[Ed. Note: The Internet is a terrifying, depraved, evil place populated by monsters who love nightmares (looking at you, faithful readers). Our staff blogger Phillip knows all about it—he is one of you, a fellow monster. Phillip loves spelunking in the Internet, looking for the worst humanity has to offer, and every Sunday he’ll check in with us to talk about the horrors he’s explored and enjoyed since his last post. W is only the beginning of the things this is NSF. This week's awful subject: 4chanonymous]

Even the most pathetically far gone soul that scours the internet knows not to start ranting to the neighbors. This is real life—we live with rules of etiquette, and it’s not polite to recount your latest depraved web ventures, entertaining as they might be, to just anyone who will listen. No one wants to hear about that sweet jailbait thread you found last night on Something Awful. Epic stories about animal porn and feces only get you weird looks and restraining orders. The result is a buffer of silence that envelopes these purveyors of internet insanity when they step out of their homes.

That’s why I get excited when I spot a fellow net crawler like myself. They don’t try to make their presence known but there are subtle signs one can pick up on. Often it will be a simple little slip of the tongue, an insertion of what could be random nonsense to the uninitiated ear.

A few days ago, somebody in my class made an off-hand comment about playing the game. He probably meant something like the game of life or The Game by Neil Strauss but upon hearing that comment, a guy in an army jacket sitting in front of me quietly murmured to himself, “You just lost.” (For those who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, look here) Once you pick up on a signal like that, it’s easy to make friends. Knowing the lingo automatically creates a strong link. All it takes from there to coax out their true wild side is to name-drop some familiar memes with a nice helping of friendly banter. Soon enough that dude in the army jacket, who had barely said a word all semester, was raving about drugs and zombies to me and everyone else in earshot.

Saying “ITTY BITTY BABY, ITTY BITTY BOAT” and then waiting for the ubiquitous “I don’t believe it!” used to be a good way of flushing out the /b/tards from a forum, classroom or crowded elevator.

People can be like hermit crabs—they’ll come out when they feel safe and accepted. And that’s exactly why /b/tards (regular posters in 4chan’s “random” section) and other denizens of the seedier places of the internet like to stay under the radar. They trade pornography, they are capable of committing horrible acts of cruelty, they can gang up and destroy somebody’s life, and yet they feel like exposing their questionable net lives to the real world is a serious breach in security that will result in being ostracized by their peers. Admitting to a regular diet of 4chan and Mucho Sucko is like admitting to meeting up every Tuesday with a few sweaty guys and going dungeon crawling with your level 43 half-elf druid. Embarrassment is only the beginning.

Despite the clear obstacles to meeting my internet brethren, I’ve still got a scattered handful of confirmed web subversives that I know. What I find most interesting is the sheer range and variety of these people. There’s no true stereotype to follow. Contrary to popular belief, 4chan is not primarily comprised of 14 year old boys. I won’t name names but I can tell you, we’re men, women, metal heads, bookworms, bros, hoes, and in some cases just normal looking people you pass by without notice every day. We are indistinguishable from the rest of you, but let me assure you, we are there. There’s probably some sitting amongst you right now, picking up on some kind of unspoken frequency, laughing at dead babies while you continue with your daily grind.

I have not decided yet where I am going to go with this blog.   I have had quite a bit of writing to do because of the field of expertise in which I work.  In fact, I have already had two research papers published in scholarly journals in my field.   However, my writing to date has been of a scientific nature.  Perhaps this is why I am running into problems now.  Having a blog is what I liken to writing in a journal, or diary.  I have tried writing in a journal/diary before.  One of my favorite things to do would be to find the perfect book in which to write things down.  I have an entire collection of journals – some big, some small.  A few journals are hardcover.  Some have leather covers.  And, to date, not one of them has more than a page written in them.

I think about things quite thoroughly sometimes.  Writing these thoughts down would help me keep track of them.  I could build and expand on previous thoughts; perhaps I would learn something about myself.  At the same time, I am very weary of writing down my thoughts.  For one, they can be very personal – not only things I think about others, but personal private things about myself.  Things that might embarrass me.  I might write things that could embarrass someone else, or be hurtful to them.  I’m not the kind of person who would thoughtfully hurt another person (I always try to think before I speak, but I know I’ve said things in the heat of the moment at some point or another in the past).  Some things are best left unsaid.  So, although the purpose of writing a journal is to use it as a sounding board for your own personal thoughts and feelings, I hesitate because the things I write could potentially be used against me.  Is this a responsibility I want to accept?

My writings could also be used to chronicle my life.  Not so much my thoughts and feelings, but what I did on a certain day – places I have gone, things I have seen – what I have heard.  This does not sound so bad – but I think I should either write it all down, or not at all.  I can still embarrass myself and others here too.  I do not anticipate being famous one day and having someone write a biography on me (or writing an autobiography for that matter), so I know that nothing I write (as far as chronicling my life) will be read by any significant number of people.

As I’ve grown older, I am finding there are a great many social topics that I am interested in.  Being a good citizen means taking an active interest in society around you.  Yes, that could sound “hokey” to some, but I love the country I live in and feel fortunate to do so even if we are not perfect.  I know there are a great deal shittier places to live than where I am now.  Recently I have found myself having a great deal of thoughts about the happenings in the world around me.  Several times, I have sat down, done some research (as I have been well trained to do) on a topic that I have some thoughts on, and then tried to figure out what I wanted to write.  Again this brings me back to the fact that I can’t decide what I want the purpose of this blog to be.

I feel like I want to give my own educated responses to some of the topics that interest me.  I would present both the pros and cons and back up my argument with facts or established evidence, and not promote the politics of fear (which is one of the biggest peeves I have about the social topics that are covered in the media [print, radio or television] these days).   But at some point I think to myself that many others are doing the same thing by writing about these same topics – so why should I waste my time when someone else is already doing it?   Again, back to the purpose of my blog….am I writing for myself – or am I writing for those that might come across my blog at some point and read my thoughts?  I mean, that is the purpose of a blog – to have others read it – is it not?  If I wanted my words to remain unread, I could write them in MS word – or even on a journal-type web site where no one could read my writing but myself.  Perhaps this is where having a niche comes in?  Having something that I am particularly knowledgeable in and then writing about it in a blog.  I do not want to be that focused.  If I was a writer by trade, I could see the point.  But I am a scientist. (And this is another place that can give me problems – combining objectivity with subjectivity)

I definitely want to stay anonymous in my blogging.  But how anonymous can one be these days?  There have already been several instances of people being “outted” from their blogs, and then having to suffer the consequences – including getting fired from their jobs because of things they wrote in a blog.

Trying to balance the personal private writing with the personal public writing is something that will vex me for a while until I figure out just what I want to do.

At the moment, I am leaning towards having both personal journal entries in addition to sociological commentary.

Ok it is late and I am starting to loose focus.  I will read this again in the morning to see how little sense I have made.

I would like to hear comments about this from anyone.

We are of Peace.  Always

Unless you have been living under a rock the last days you have probably heard about Kurt Greenbaum, the journalist and blogger who got someone to resign from his job because of an innocent word posted as a comment.
You can read a very brief recap at a website called: “Kurt Greenbaum Is A Pussy!“

I am not going to retell a story that has been perfectly summed up at ‘Kurt Greenbaum Is A Pussy!’ and that has probably been repeated over and over again in different online forums. At the moment I am more interested in exploring if the online vigilance directed at him is acceptable or as low as what he did to the person who lost his job.

I do have to be a bit brief, so bear with me. Greenbaum got offended by the word ‘Pussy’, tracked down the poster which resulted with him losing his job and then gloating about it.
That is of course the short story of the whole brouhaha.

Being a journalist, a blogger and wearing the title; Director of Social Media, he seems to be absolutely clueless what goes on online. I am not shocked at all about what has happened. People have tracked down all is publicly available information and posted it online.
Based on some comments, people have contacted his boss and even his home.

This is of course a typical example of how a mob works. They see something they disagree with it and retaliate how they see fit, regardless if it is legal or not.
Keep in mind that Greenbaum asked: “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten? And did you like it?” Most people who have been online for a while know that at least one person will post something juvenile.
So is this as bad as what Greenbaum did to this poor guy who probably just wanted to be silly?

Let us compare what has happened to these two.
The Pussy-Guy posted anonymously and obviously in jest; not thinking he would lose his job OR that Greenbaum would violate his own ToS regarding sharing personal information with a third-party.
Greenbaum gloats about getting the Pussy-Guy resigned and also calling him a jackass (which some find offensive); which results in a majority of people trying to explain to him that what he did was extremely rude, and people collects and repost publicly available information online. With this information readily available people start to contact him.

Personally I honestly don’t see anything wrong with what has happened with Greenbaum. He made the bed and he should now lie in it too. It is of course almost like a ‘eye for an eye’ revenge against Greenbaum; but how else could this have been dealt with?
People are probably giving him and his boss a lot of grief at the moment, but personally I don’t see how that iss any worse or comparable to someone losing their job. Especially when the economy in the USA is not so good at the moment.

I can also only assume that it is not just how Greenbaum handled this incident, but how the state of privacy is at the moment. Online it has been assumed that if you use a pseudonym you should have some level of privacy. You will never have 100% privacy; unless you get offline and live in the woods, but you have probably some type of paper-trail since your were born anyway. Privacy is still something you don’t try to take from someone, and this is what Greenbaum did. Privacy is becoming more and more of a luxury item, so when someone tries to limit your privacy and anonymity more, people get angry; and that is what happened here. Greenbaum couldn’t respect the ToS privacy part and people just saw red.
Of course, gloating about having someone resigned from their job isn’t really that popular either.

As most people who don’t like Greenbaum now I also hope he loses his job. Of course, I honestly don’t see that happen now, but at least he will have a really bad reputation online and remembered as the jackass who got someone fired for posting the word ‘pussy’ online and later gloating about it.

This is my lousy two cents about this.
Kurt Greenbaum, you sir are a pussy!

Hello world.

It’s definitely been a grueling 5 weeks of school. It did start out at a slow pace but as various projects accumulated over the weeks to the final one, things DID become and ARE very hectic.

This final semester in DMC has taught me alot of things. I’ll leave my emotional growth for those who are really interested (ask!) because the purpose of this blog isn’t to act as a rant-dom. But, a dedication to a very important and practical module, New Communication Technologies (NCT). Let’s welcome this topic with open arms once again. Every week we’d familiarise ourselves with at least 2 new topics (I’d cover that in a later post) but one thing that I have gathered from the majority of the presentations is that:

Social media connects, displays, stays and affects.

The other day, due to sheer boredom and procrastination of schoolwork, (haha) I decided to revisit my ancient blog that I devotedly updated every day when i was about 15/16. I was greeted with horrifying instances of libel on ‘bitches’ I couldn’t stand in school. Constant flaming of the academia realm and very very unflattering pictures of my classmates and I. Oh the embarrassment. The worse part? After making the site private, Google still indexed the blog url in its search results. I curse archiving! Base on my understanding of how the search engine ranks the result list, I’d have to bug my ex-classmates to revive their also ancient blogs to remove their link to mine.

Moving on, but still in relation.

I’m not a basketball fan and that means I don’t scour the NBA’s site for latest news on their players. But not long ago this year, a basketball player named Michael Beasley made the headlines. Not because of a fantastic winning 3 pointer but because of this seemingly innocent picture he posted on Twitter via Twitpic:

Picture taken from sportybrooks.com

Yes, we can tell that his threshold for pain is really high and he has a self-esteem to compliment it. And that the inscription almost reads like ‘Super Cool Beans’. Should have converted more people into Beasley evangelists right?

But no it didn’t.

Let me direct you to the bottom right hand corner of the picture. See the small blurry packet of ‘herbs’ that suspiciously looks like marijuana? Fans picked up on that and it wasn’t long before huge controversies and an uproar inevitably ensued.

Beasley was fined $50,000.

Companies should really tighten their rules on social media sites.

There was a particular incident with a K-pop singer who made a defamatory comment about the country he was living in on Myspace 4 years ago. Netizens managed to resurface that comment and that also ensued a huge uproar which led him to stay in the shadows away from the music industry for the time being. Or not.

The consequential reach of a tactless post is so huge. It scares me. I’ve since learnt to think twice before tweeting or posting anything that may be interpreted as controversial.

There is close to no anonymity on the world wide web. And if you happen to chance upon a social media/google guru and offend him/her…

All the best in your coming years.

p.s (To those who are too free and decide to search for my blog, I’ve already cleaned it up enough to hide things from us minions haha.)

]]> http://deenakwennig.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/online-anonymity-and-the-gray-handle-brigade/ Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:45:20 +0000 Deena Kay http://deenakwennig.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/online-anonymity-and-the-gray-handle-brigade/

I’m going to talk about anonymity. Online anonymity and what people act like when anonymous.

Before I go on, if you are new to MLM or just researching any other info. Craigslist forums is NOT the the place to do it. Just “google it”.

I visited a forum recently where I was new. Most of the time, most forums have what you might call a “queen bee” which is typically a female or on occasion you might even get the odd guy trying to be the “boss of the board” so to speak. Typically however, it’s women. Maybe we can examine why later. For now, lets talk about their online behaviors.

Anonymity affords many people an opportunity to “show their true colors” and not face the consequences. Maybe to their family, they’re the nice, self respecting mom of who knows how many kids and wife of who knows who. BUT, online under the guise of either fake names or as it appears to be on Craigslist “Gray Handles”, they can be who they “really are”. Nasty and hostile to those of us who might find success when they do not. I found that who they really are happens to be extremely rude, nasty and unprofessional at best.  Of course not all gray handles are created equal. I have met some who actually had a positive contribution. Consequently, those turned out to be men. Now, keep in mind that I “assume” the ones I talk about were female because the rest of their posting history was in “women’s issues”, “romantic this or that” or whatever. One even mentioned her husband. They seemed to be just simply rude to most everyone, especially new people.

Now I wonder, how would they behave online if we actually knew who they really were? Had their names and phone numbers? My guess is they would behave much differently. After all, they wouldn’t call somebody at the grocery store who didn’t behave the way they thought they should, face to face, an idiot would they? Of course not. Keep in mind there are many reasons to be anonymous online however, much of the time, it’s simply because they’re to chicken shit to state their mind in their own identity. Me, I am okay with stating my opinion and speaking my mind. I don’t need to rely on the veil of anonymity. Those who post trashy things and insult people who are simply seeking help, doing research and asking questions, while they themselves hide under the guise of anonymity or some fake name have ZERO credibility and more often than not, lack any kind of control in their own lives.

Let me tell you this, if I give you a bitch out, it will come from me, me directly in my own name and not while I’m hiding behind a wall so you can’t see me. If I give you praise, it will come from me, me directly and not while hiding behind a wall so you can’t see me. If you linked here from Craigslist, you know who the “Gray Handle Brigade” is and know this, they really are powerless people in their own lives and if they truly believed sincerely and openly what they say they wouldn’t need to hide their identity. To the Gray Handle Brigade, F-You! Stop being so insulting, degrading and demeaning to new people who just want to know things, expand their breadth of knowledge and have questions to ask. You clearly are NOT the queen bee in your own life or you would not need to be that way online and hide while you’re at it. Get off your fat asses and be real with us if you want even an ounce of credibility because when you hide behind the walls of anonymity, insulting others and being demeaning to them it tells me you are afraid to speak your mind in your own identity and are a very weak person in real life. Sorry about you and your weakness. To me and those of us like me who do NOT feel the need to hide, good for us! We actually are strong enough to speak our minds and share our thoughts in our own identity because we don’t have to worry about who we are. We aren’t nasty, rude people like those who insult while hiding behind the wall. Like those who throw stones while outside of our view, in fear. You’re a chicken.

Apparently I have enough time to update my post tag list, nothing new in the land of N yet, trying to figure out how I’m going to interlink all of my story’s into movuies and stuff.

Three horses, one erased, Les Tenieres, France. Click to view the photo at Flickr.

I spent four days on my scooter wandering this little region to the north of Tours, France, blown away by the access the scooter was giving me. When I pulled off the main highway onto this tiny road that might as well have been private, these two horses (and a third one erased) were just posing for me. I was realizing the dream of riding a scooter in the countryside with a nice camera and all the time in the world.

Nobody at home knows where I am; nobody here knows who I am.